Mississippi officials now have a new weapon with which to crack down on the state’s large population of diploma mills. According to the Associated Press, Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican, last month signed into law a bill that gives the Mississippi Commission on College Accreditation the power to go to court to shut down issuers of unapproved postsecondary degrees.
The legislation stemmed from complaints by higher-education officials who said that “not only were the diploma mills harmful to higher education, but they also perpetuated negative perceptions of Mississippi,” according to a 2005 report by the state’s College Board cited by the AP.
A number of diploma mills have apparently moved to Mississippi since states like Hawaii, Louisiana, and Wyoming—previously known for their own diploma-mill industries—passed legislation similar to Mississippi’s. A special report in The Chronicle in 2004, Degrees of Suspicion, outlined the scale of the industry.
